Update!

Gerard Butler Named in Battery Investigation

Paparazzo filed a police report against 300 star, claiming he was assaulted early Tuesday morning

By Gina Serpe, Whitney English Oct 08, 2008 8:14 PMTags
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Maybe Gerard Butler didn't have to dig that deep to play an aggressive Spartan after all.

A police report has been filed against the Scottish actor the night after the 300 star allegedly got into a physical altercation with a paparazzo.

"He was named as a suspect in a report taken for misdemeanor battery," Los Angeles Police Department Officer Julianne Sohn tells E! News, adding that the report was filed at the LAPD's Hollywood Division.

Butler has yet to comment on the incident, which took place around 2 a.m. Tuesday, following the premiere party for his new film, RocknRolla.

While no detectives are yet on the case and no arrests have been made, Sohn says the department will follow through shortly on an investigation.

"Hollywood is a very busy division, so they have to prioritize cases," she says. "It should be assigned in a week or so."

In a video released by the INF agency, resident photog Mark Morgan Kreusch offers his account of the incident.

Kreusch says  he was tailing Butler's limo after the RocknRolla bash at Crown Bar when Butler jumped out and approached Kreusch's vehicle.

"He jumped through my window, grabbed me by the throat and hit me. He hit me like three or four times mostly to the back of the head," Kreusch says.

Butler hit him several more times and kicked the side of his car, per the paparazzo; all the while Butler supposedly kept yelling, "Oh, you want a photo? You want to photograph me?"

After the altercation, Kreusch says, he went to the hospital for stitches and a CT scan before filing a police report. No word on whether he plans to sue.

Incident aside, it's not all bad news for the actor: The Guy Ritchie-directed RocknRolla, in which Butler stars, opened today in limited release.

(Originally published Oct. 8, 2008 at 11:08 a.m. PT.)